i was nearly twenty before i met anyone who lived by words alone, whose face shone with the taste of them spoken in small rooms of listeners, who lived light in this world – half of him hunting and gleaning the shadow world for words that could hold this falling apart. cancer took him young…
evening finds me walking gate to gate to door – checking ties and bolts closing porcupine from greens and genet from fowl. there is no sound but my breath and the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, sometimes goats quick chewing on hay. i don’t remember not loving here – even before i came. even before…
and of course there had been flowers passed between them – fretful fingers plucking at language unlearned, accidentally unsaying the unspoken.
she said the way her veil fell, the drape of cloth, the colour, was poetry. but i could not see what she saw and wondered which metaphor came first – falling veils and what we know about everything, about the world, about being women – and what is being hidden or revealed. or wearing poetry…
day ten of national lockdown finds me, sunday morning, pants rolled up above the knees – catching tadpoles on the clay bank of the garden swale. citizen science i tell myself silent giggling, squish mud intent – lurching after the the slippery platanna i had blind netted under the lily pad – though i…
how did the cicadas know to sing this strange summer – two days of bare arms, melted cats and the loud growing of greens, tendrilled peas pulling tender leaves up the trellis. sunday brings rain and we turn once more to the quieting of the year.
(it is true our street was named for the first white settler who visited these shores with intent – in the seventies we thought this was ok) it was a childhood drawing of a house door window window walls bright yellow painted bricks. slightly to the right but still mostly in front, a jacaranda tree…
my words are few under this greying sky, wind tossing the trees among clouds that smell of rain while the goats stand by, watching in a reverent silence punctuated only by the drag of branch, snap of twigs. i had cut back the brambles yesterday – cool under a distant blue sky, picked my way…